Bloggers and human rights groups are calling for a
boycott of Yahoo after the United States internet giant supplied information to
the Chinese central government that led to a 10-year prison sentence for
mainland journalist Shi Tao.

Privacy International said a boycott would send a clear message to Yahoo,
while Reporters Without Borders said it would ask institutional shareholders to
raise the issue of Yahoo's behaviour with the company's management.

Several posters to internet forums and blog sites
criticised Yahoo for its actions and promised to quit using the company's
services.

"I do not intend to click on Yahoo ever again, and I'm urging everyone I know
to do the same," one internet poster said.

The controversy surrounding Yahoo's involvement in the case highlights the
risks foreign internet companies take on as they pursue the lucrative mainland
market: complying with the government's strict demands on regulation of the
internet could end up damaging a company's reputation back home.

This is not the first time a foreign internet company has come under fire for
its actions in China. Critics have blasted Microsoft for censoring words such as
"freedom" and "democracy" in its blogging service MSN Spaces, while Google has
been accused of removing sensitive pages from its search index.

But the Yahoo case is different because the company's actions resulted in the
imprisonment of a journalist accused of passing state secrets via e-mail.

Vincent Drossel, head of the Asia-Pacific desk at Reporters Without Borders,
said: "It is the life and freedom of a man, Shi Tao, that has been jeopardised
because Yahoo gave information to the Chinese police."

Reaction to the case already shows signs of growing into a wide campaign
aimed at pressuring Yahoo to change its business practices in China, much in the
same way that consumer activism forced apparel and shoe manufacturers such as
Nike to raise labour standards in the country.

Julien Pain, head of the internet desk at Reporters Without Borders, said:
"So far, we have not asked for any embargo on Yahoo products. But I have
received many e-mails and I've seen posts on news groups saying that people
didn't trust Yahoo any more and they were about to change their e-mail
accounts."

Yahoo said it had no choice but to comply with the law when its Hong Kong
unit was asked to turn over details to mainland authorities concerning e-mail
account huoyan1989@....

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang was unapologetic when reporters pressed the issue
during an internet conference held in Hangzhou at the weekend.

"To be doing business in China or anywhere else in the world we have to
comply with local law. I will not put our employees at risk," Mr Yang said.

"When it comes to seeking information on our users, we have a very clear-cut
set of rules that any government has to engage with us through court documents,
legal documents and legal procedures.

"We get a lot of those every day around the world. We get hundreds of those
in the US, we get hundreds in Europe, we get a lot of them in China. We do not
know what they want that information for. We're not told what they look for. If
they give us the proper documentation and a court order, we give them things
that satisfy both our privacy policy and the local rules."

Lawrence Sussman, a lawyer at O'Melveny & Myers in Beijing, said failure
to comply with the government's demands would have meant dire legal
ramifications for Yahoo's mainland executives.

"The company could be in violation of the state secrets law, which would be a
criminal offence, and any officer who is personally responsible for making that
decision would be subject to potential criminal liability," he said.

To most observers, Yahoo's willingness to co-operate with government attempts
to control the internet seems to indicate the company - along with other foreign
players - has put making money ahead of other values, such as freedom of
expression and respect for human rights.

Edward Yu, chief executive of Analysys International, said foreign internet
companies must walk a fine line as they wanted to please Beijing and their
customers at home.

"Any company that wants to do business in China has to balance the economic
benefits and the probable outrage from their home country or other developed
countries," Mr Yu said.

But human rights should not be compromised, Mr Pain said.

"I think at some point you have to tell the Chinese authorities that you
won't respect their laws if it infringes on universal values," he said. "And if
it goes against your universal principles, you have to say: `No, I won't comply
with your demands.'"

Stephen Frost, research fellow at the Southeast Asia Research Centre at the
City University of Hong Kong, said foreign internet companies were too caught up
with making money in China and had failed to think through the potential fallout
should they be called on to behave in ways unsettling to customers at home.

"While it is easy to get seduced by all the money that can be made out of
these new technologies in China, there is a flip side to the coin. It's taken
Yahoo a number of years to develop a good reputation, but it has taken a couple
of days in the blog frontline and mainstream media to bring that reputation into
disrepute," he said.

"This is the kind of thing that people don't forget. It will always be there
on the internet. Whenever you type in Yahoo and China in the search engine,
these are the sorts of things that are always going to pop up. People will
always sort of refer back to them: `You know Yahoo was the informant for the
mainland police.'"

Translation of criminal verdict against Shi Tao"Shi Tao leaked
this information to an overseas hostile element, taking advantage of the fact
that he was working overtime alone in his office to connect to the internet
through his phone line and use his personal e-mail account
(huoyan1989@...) to send his notes.

"Account holder information furnished by Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd,
which confirms that for IP address 218.76.8.201 at 11:32.17pm on April 20, 2004,
the corresponding user information was as follows: user telephone number:
0731-4376362 located at the Contemporary Business News office in Hunan; address:
2F, Building 88, Jianxiang New Village, Kaifu District, Changsha."